


November 2018, California - Part II

by germanjj



Series: Buried Under Clear Glass (Finished Series) [7]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: After Party, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:13:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23668186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/germanjj/pseuds/germanjj
Summary: Sometimes love is so clear to see, visible for everyone around you, and yet you're not able to reach out and touch it, grab it, pull it towards you. It's like it's buried under clear glass.And sometimes, when you're reaching out and finally do touch it, you have to make a choice.
Relationships: Timothée Chalamet/Armie Hammer
Series: Buried Under Clear Glass (Finished Series) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1657570
Comments: 16
Kudos: 82





	November 2018, California - Part II

We don’t get out. We finish our parade down the red carpet, and then we’re immediately thrown into a busy mix of co-workers and ushers and friends and hosts. The event starts, and I’m pulled in by what’s happening on stage. Timmy wins, and I proudly stand next to him, hugging him tight and then clapping the loudest after he’s given his speech. 

Not for a second, I forget the way he looked at me outside. I’m never not conscious of the heat of his body next to my own as we sit. The show ends, and we’re at the after-party, like two people drowning, being swept away by the strong current. 

We have drinks, but I can see that Timmy is careful of how much he has, switching to water after one glass, blaming it on an upset stomach. I follow his example after I’m halfway through my second. We talk. Mostly to other people, but we manage to speak to each other too, timid and careful, in half sentences and looks, and light touches that should have clued me in much, much sooner. Both of us are tiptoeing around the burning elephant in the room. 

Around my fingers caressing his back, around him pressing into the touch. Around the way he looked at me as if-.

I take a sip of my water and smile at the woman in front of me, who has been talking to me for five minutes now, most of which I have already forgotten about. “Where’s Tim?” she asks, probably noticing my lack of interest, which she doesn’t deserve and which I can’t help. 

“Oh, probably being stopped and congratulated at every turn,” I joke, although that’s not unlikely. 

When he stays gone for another ten minutes and I can’t spot him anywhere in the crowd, I excuse myself and head out to search for him. I find him in one of the men’s bathrooms, on the other side of a bar that is much less crowded than the first two I checked. 

In fact, it’s empty save for Timmy, whose jacket is lying on one of the armchairs by the door. 

“You okay?” I ask him and have to laugh at the miserable look he shoots me. He’s facing me, his back towards the mirrors, both hands behind him, fumbling with his top. 

“The knot is loose, and I can’t get it right again,” he groans, contorting his face as he tries to look at his fingers through the mirror. 

I hesitate and feel immediately out of place, my heart taking up speed before my mind catches up. The tiny voice in my head is telling me to leave and not step closer, not offer my help, not offer to touch him once again, touch his naked back and the straps of his top I had been thinking about the whole night. 

I kill the voice and step closer. “You want help with that?”

He looks up and hesitates too. As if he’s listening to his own voice yelling at him before making the same decision I have. 

He nods and turns around, offering me his back, his vast expanses of light skin, sharp shoulder blades peeking through just underneath the fabric. The straps of his top are hanging in disarray over the delicate knobs of his spine. 

My mouth is dry as I take another step and reach for two of the straps. I work quietly, avoiding Timmy’s eyes that watch my face through the mirror in front of us. I let the straps slide through my fingers, my knuckles grazing his skin. There is a low hiss from Timmy, and when I do look up to find his eyes in the mirror, I see them closed and see him biting down his lower lip. 

I tie one knot, small enough to be invisible under the jacket, pulling it tight with no reason other than to see the rope pull at his skin, to have him sway a little against me, to hear that hiss again. I reach for the straps on top, and this time let my knuckles glide down his spine like I had imagined it sitting next to him in the auditorium. 

His breath shakes as he breathes out, and I look up, finding his eyes open and dark and looking directly into mine. 

I’m out of my mind. From afar, I can see myself crossing line after line we had so carefully drawn back in Crema. It’s like watching another person or another part of me come to life and take over. But I can’t stop. Not my fingers from pulling the straps tighter than they need to be, just to loosen them a little once the knot is done. Not my hand from caressing his skin underneath the straps under the false pretense of straightening them out.

Timmy is breathing heavier. I can feel it as much as I can hear it. I know what it means, I know that I caused it. The only thing I can’t do is step outside my mind and realize what it is we’re actually doing here. 

I hook my fingers underneath the straps and pull him towards me, gently, and then I bow down and place a kiss against the nape of his neck, breathing in the smell of him, letting my lips graze his skin.

Timmy moans, open and honest, and the sound touches every cell in my body, and then he falls forward, catching himself with both hands on the bathroom sink. 

He turns in the tight space between the vanity and my body, looking up at me with wide eyes that show the same hunger that courses through me. “What are we doing?” he breathes the question I had asked him what feels like millennial ago. 

I have as much as an answer as I did back then. And for one selfish, reckless moment, I don’t want to find the answer. Want only to stand here in this room with him, close enough that I can feel his breath hitting the skin of my throat. 

“Do you remember our Skype call a few weeks ago?” I ask, not recognizing my own voice. “When you were naked?” 

Timmy nods, the tint on his cheeks deepening. He’s so close now.

“Did you get yourself off after we hung up?”

His gaze shoots up at me, his eyes impossibly dark. “What?” he swallows audibly. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Please, tell me.”

Timmy nods then, mouth slack, his eyes darting between my eyes and my lips. 

“Why did you ask me that?” he repeats, breathless. 

“Because that’s all I could think about when I did it.”

“Fuck, Armie.” The words are strained, and Timmy lets his head fall against my chest, his forehead pressing against my heart, both his hands clinging to my jacket. As if he’s looking for the physical connection to ground himself, torn between pulling me in and pushing me away. 

My own arms hover over his head before sliding around him, one hand burying itself in the thick curls of his hair, the other holding onto the small of his back, bare skin burning against my palm. He moans again, and this time it vibrates against my body, spreading from my chest through my whole body.

The smell of his cologne and his shampoo surround me, and he’s so warm, so close, and all I want is get even closer and to kiss him. The desire jolts through me, the knowledge that I could reach out and pull his head up, and he would respond in kind, would look at me with those dark eyes again. Would kiss me back. 

“Fuck.” Something twists inside my head, puzzle pieces finally clicking together. So many words on the tip of my tongue I have never said, so many thoughts that have remained unformed, but nevertheless looming in the back just in case I would ever have use for them. 

I’ve known this desire. I’ve come as far as acknowledging that there is something about Timmy, and about what I feel for him that is entirely different to what I’ve ever felt before and should feel for him as a married man. But I have always stopped there, and I stop there now. Not the fear of learning something about myself is holding me back, but the thought of what happens after. 

Desire I can live with. But what do you do with love like that? 

That fear doesn’t ebb away. Not when Timmy pushes closer. Not when he chants my name over and over until his words find the same rhythm as my heart. 

The fear mixes with desire, both my body and my heart yearning for him. I’ve loved before him, but never with such intoxicating intensity. 

“Timmy, we can’t do this.” 

Timmy shakes his head against my chest and then presses away in one motion as if it had taken all his willpower to bring some distance between us, and he had to do it suddenly, violently, or he wouldn’t have been able to do it at all. But he does it as if he was preparing for it all along. 

“I’m sorry, Timmy. I really can’t do this.” The words coming out of my mouth are stale and lonely, and I want to take them back immediately, just for a second, just long enough that I could have him, for one night, one kiss even, like an addict begging for a fix of what he knows he should stay away from. That’s all the more reason why I press my lips shut and breathe against the burning inside my chest. 

He looks up at me from a few feet away, and his face is so open, so vulnerable, tears shimmering in his eyes. “I know. I know. I know that.”

“Fuck!” He’s rubbing his face with his hands, shaking his head. “I’m sorry.” He looks up, for a moment freezing both of us in time, our eyes meeting in full understanding of what just happened, the implications of it, the possibilities. Then he is the first to break our gaze, to turn around and leave the room.


End file.
